Doriane Avina
History Dori was always a peculiar girl. No one knows what it was about the girl that drew the Corax to her at infancy, but then when do they ever know? Either way a spirit egg was made for her, and until the age of 12, she had to deal with what that meant alone. Her parents, ever well-meaning, just never knew what to do with her. As a child, she often switched rapidly from hyper and distracted to hyper-focused. The doctors smacked her upside the head with the 'ADHD' label, gave her a prescription for Ritalin, and sent her on her way. The Ritalin worked wonders on Dori -- if you could call its effects 'wonders.' Her hyperactivity dropped off sharply, only to be replaced with an edgy twitchiness that made her self-destructive and irritable. It also started wearing at her memory, making her too spacey to commit complicated things like addresses or phone numbers, or even other people's names. Remembering what she ate for breakfast a day ago was like rocket science; this morning's breakfast, advanced physics. The doctors suggested giving her puzzles to help her exercise her brain: her parents complied. She took to the puzzles like a duck to water. All kinds of puzzles: math puzzles, logic puzzles, word puzzles, rubix cubes. Any kind of puzzles she could get her hands on, she'd work tirelessly to solve. As long as she was on the Ritalin, she didn't get distracted, and for a while her memory seemed to get better, and occupied the range of mere absent-mindedness, rather than that of a mind made entirely of cheesecloth. Her parents were concerned at the effect the drug had on her, and with trepidation, weaned her off the drug when she was 10. The effects weren't immediate but eventually they saw her to be hyper and bubbly again, easily distractable. The edge had been taken off though: she was easier to handle now, at the least. Unfortunately, the effect on her memory stuck, but so did her love for puzzles. During this time she'd been home-schooled, with her parents feeling that public school teachers (and children, for that matter) would not be able to nurture the odd girl in the way she needed. But money got tight, and both parents needed to take up jobs, and so Dori was sent to school. Although it was the best public school they could find, that's not saying much: the teachers couldn't handle her, and the odd things she'd say. The kids made fun of her, called her crazy and a nutcase, and no one befriended her. That suited her alright: friends sounded like fun, but she had plenty of good times on her own working puzzles and thinking her strange thoughts. Dori, for one, was the type to think on the strange intricacies of life, and follow every train of thought to where it led and eventually derailed. She also found a strange compulsion to collect things that caught her eye: watches, aluminum toys, dog tags, things of that nature. At some point she found a small white carved rod near a jewelry story, and stashed that away as well, though for no reason she could tell except her pat-racking tendencies. Her room was always a mess, but not in that controlled way where the occupant can find things again. No, for Dori, every day was a struggle to find the things she lost, what toy she put down where. It didn't help either that kids would take her stuff and imply that she'd merely forgotten where she put it. She was rarely angry at this, mostly perplexed, and took most things in stride. Sometimes, though, when she got angry, she got rough and started pushing kids around. Unfortunately for her, they pushed back, and she was left in a heap, angry and dejected. At 12, one such day had occurred, and as she was trying to find her new necklaces in the hurricane zone that was her bedroom, a feeling of panic started to well up in her chest. She felt suffocated, like her hoard of prettythings were bearing over her and causing all these problems she'd had in her life. Panic turned to anger, anger at her parents for putting her on medication, anger at herself for forgetting everything, anger at the world for making her so different that no one could relate. She started clawing at herself, shrieking in upset, when suddenly she exploded into a strange and twisted creature. Feathers. She looked in the mirror and that's what she saw: feathers. And a beak. She held up her strange wing-arms, examining them in the brief moment of wonder she'd have before she started to panic full-force. Things were swept everywhere as she scrambled around her room in terror, for a good thirty minutes, until she felt herself cowering in the corner of her closet. "Hey! Hey kid!" She lifted her head, feeling overwhelmed and afraid but now tired as well. As it turned out there was a man in the mirror, trying to talk to her. He explained what he could: that she was a Corax, a wereraven. That it was her duty to find out secrets in the world and then bring them in the open. And as a special tidbit, he taught her the origin story of Raven and Helios. But the rest, he said, was up to her to find out. Since then she's dropped school and started traveling. (Her parents wished that she wouldn't, but they knew what she was, and knew it was futile to try to hold her to a normal life. Instead, they try to keep contact via phone and email ... when she remembers.) Various Corax would meet up with her in the strangest places, and tell her a little bit more. Some would test her to see how well she could draw the secrets out of them, but though she tried, she was not very good at that. Soon she had a rudimentary knowledge of shifting, Corax lore, and a few other shifter breeds out there. She could reach the Umbra, and would explore for hours before returning to her home realm. The first time she drank an eye she found herself both profoundly disturbed and excited at the same time. The body spoke to her, showed her the murderer that snuck in during the night and shot him in the forehead. She spread the story, immortalizing the man's memory. At 13, she attended her first Parliament, on the lowest branch. She heard all the gossip and rumors, the stories and renown swapping, learned of the spirit eggs, the fates of those missing. Not long after, she found a Garou Sept, and poked around there before they chased her out with fang and claw. She also learned a little of the Bastet, secretive though they were, but not enough to be particularly noteworthy. She started taking on more stealthy training to start spying more. Soon, she learned through the death of a betrayer of one Sept's plan against another, in New Mexico. She sold the secret to the Sept, in return merely for their good will. They then were ready for the assault that came, and they sang Dori's praises. But Dori was already gone, chasing something else shiny and exciting. By 14 now, she has done enough to get her to a slightly higher branch at Parliament, and she's learned a few of Helios's skills. She wanders wherever she feels like it, talking to everyone she meets and learning life (and death) secrets. In her trips through the Umbra, at some point she made friends with another Corax, Lyra. The two became friends -- something she'd never experienced before and that Lyra experienced rarely. When Lyra died from a fomor attack that wouldn't let her get away, Lyra's fetish, the Sliver of Helios, was left to Dori. She keeps it in a sheath, close to her body at all times. Now she's wandered into Crystal Springs to find out the secret behind the Springwater and the stories behind the downfall of the Garou. Not to mention meeting friends, causing mischi--shiny! * Personality Dori continues to be spacey, but utterly cheerful. She tends to put people off by her strange tendencies, like hoarding, head-bobbing, and her intense black-eyed stare. It's not easy to maintain her attention for long unless you give her a problem to solve: then it's impossible to take her mind away from it. She will walk up to and chat up anyone she finds, though whether they stick around to talk is another question. She fears dying without anyone to remember her story, and she resents being friendless once again. She strives to make new friends in the new area of Crystal Springs. Play List: * Stuff goes here * Logs: Later~ Friends and Family: * Stuff goes here GM Info: Other Peoples' Secrets Resources Purely by amassing shiny "stuff," she's managed to get a whole resources 1 together. Though she's technically homeless and living out of boxes or under the shelter of roofs in Corvid form, liquidated her shinies could probably get her some okay place to stay. Fetishes * Sliver of Helios Level 1, Gnosis 3 With the connection the Corax have to the Sun, it's not surprising that on occasion, Helios lets the ravens carry around bits of his radiance. A Sliver of Helios is exactly that: a dagger-shaped slice of sunlight that can illuminate even the darkest night. To use a Sliver of Helios, the Corax simply unwraps it, at which point it illuminates a 10'x10' area with sunlight. Needless to say, any vampires caught within this area (for some reason, the light fills a cube, not a sphere as one might expect) take normal damage as from sunlight. Otherwise, however, the Sliver simply serves as a glorified, very bright flashlight. It is impossible to dim the Sliver in any way -- it's an all-or-nothing type deal. If anyone attempts to use a Sliver like a dagger, under the mistaken impression that form follows function, the blade immediately shatters and the light goes out at once. (p86, Corax) * Counterfeit Level 2, Gnosis 3 Sad to say, certain Corax have a small problem with kleptomaniacal tendencies. Many of the things the Corax consider to be worth stealing are rare and/or valuable, rendering that theft risky. With that in mind, survival-minded Corax get their hands on a Counterfeit, which is nothing more than a clay tablet impressed with Raven's sigil and painted white. Most Counterfeits are three inches long and an inch across, though there are no hard and fast rules. What a Counterfeit does in ingenious. When charged with a point of Gnosis, a Counterfeit can morph itself to look like any single small object to which it is touched. Ideally the object in question is one that the Corax has just stolen and needs to replace immediately. The Counterfeit does not duplicate any of the functions of the object it's mimicking, merely the appearance. What that usually means is that the victim of the theft will attempt to use their cell phone, or gun, or fetish, or whatever, and get absolutely no response. At this point, the Counterfeit reverts to its true shape, no doubt to the dismay of its new owner. Clever Corax keep an eye on those whom they've slipped Counterfeits, because more than a few victims have thrown the fetishes away in anger at being tricked (which is how Dori stumbled upon hers!). The wise Corax makes sure he's in a position to retrieve the abandoned Counterfeit, which hopefully is undamaged and ready to be used again. (p87, Corax) Dori is currently unsure how to use these fetishes, and merely keeps them out of kleptomaniacal tendencies. Sheet Advancement ; Current +learn : * None ; Current +teach : *None. ; Advancement History :Flight 2: 6/27. ::From: Beryl's hawk companion. ::Approved By: Fenris ::Dori is learning flight from Icarus, Beryl's red hawk buddy. In order to achieve this, he's teaching her by flying her around in the open air, and correcting her flying posture by example. Then they'll go through more obstacles, and then finally through the forests where space is tight. On her own time, she's going to practice doing all of the above, in the Forest Reserve and in the city, staying in Corvid as much as possible. Recent Happenings Category:Past PCs